SDSU's dilemma: Mountain West or Big East?

In fact, the opposite is true. It’s a reason to leave the Mountain West.

The rest of your sports will be in the Big West, with seven schools in Southern California. The women’s tennis team isn’t getting on a plane to Albuquerque or Laramie and spending the night; it’s piling in a van, driving an hour to UC Irvine and returning that night.

SDSU has crunched the numbers. The estimated increase in football travel: $400,000. The estimated savings from being in the Big West: $500,000.

And another thing: Travel in the Big West is immeasurably more convenient and does not involve radical altitude or climate change. It’s an intangible, but it could translate into victories for teams not run ragged by the constant overnight trips into the Rockies.

Basketball

No Aztecs program figures to be more impacted by the decision than Steve Fisher’s, which has been ranked in the Top 25 for the last three seasons and raised the university’s national profile in ways never imagined.

The short answer is that the Mountain West is a better fit for his team, given the stiffer competition, the bigger arenas, the more at-large berths in the NCAA Tournament and their accompanying payouts. Last season the Mountain West finished fifth in conference RPI (ratings percentage index) among 33 Division I conferences. The Big West was 25th.

But it’s more complicated than a few numbers spit out by a computer.

SDSU’s plan was to ramp up its nonconference schedule to compensate for the anticipated RPI hit, and the Big West offers the flexibility to do that. Its basketball TV contract provides the Aztecs with arguably more regional and national exposure (on Fox and ESPN) than in the Mountain West, and it allows them to sell broadcast rights to selected nonconference home games.

The Big West also made a scheduling exception so SDSU could play at Kansas in January next year. And part of the Big East deal facilitates nonconference games against its membership (there have been talks with Memphis, Temple and Cincinnati). Those high-profile games could go away, or greatly diminish, by staying in the Mountain West.

Another Big West plus involves travel. In most years, the Aztecs would get on a plane once from January to mid-March, with the other conference games involving buses and far fewer nights in a hotel.

The endless trips into the mountains? The snow, the dry air, the lung-scorching elevation? The 6 a.m. wake-up calls for the bus to the airport? The weather delays? The missed class time? All that exacts a mental and physical toll, and who knows what a rested Aztecs team might do in March.

Take last year. They closed the season at Boise State, at TCU, then the Mountain West conference tournament in Las Vegas. Three days later, they were on a plane to Columbus, Ohio, for the NCAA Tournament — a team running on fumes.

The great unknown is how a league full of gyms and 250 RPIs impacts recruiting. There were rumblings over the summer that it might, that coveted players were cooling on the specter of the Aztecs in the Big West.